Thank you for being a valued part of the CNET community. As of December 1, 2020, the forums are in read-only format. In early 2021, CNET Forums will no longer be available. We are grateful for the participation and advice you have provided to one another over the years.

Thanks,

CNET Support

Question

How to recover a wifi password of a formatted laptop?

Jul 20, 2015 6:33AM PDT

My friend formatted my windows 7 ultimate laptop.Its a work laptop i used to connect to my different work sites where the wifi password are saved on may laptop.Is there a way for me to check inside my laptop perhaps on my old windows registry ?

Discussion is locked

- Collapse -
Answer
Since it was formatted the information is gone.
Jul 20, 2015 8:25AM PDT

There are spammers that claim they can get it back but no, they are just spammers out to get your money.

For a work laptop, just get your IT and have them tell you how to connect again.

- Collapse -
Answer
Yes, but too difficult
Jul 20, 2015 8:48AM PDT

It would involve running recover software and then finding just the right files with that information in them, and no guarantee it would be clear text, might be in hex.

- Collapse -
As long as it is possible!
Jul 21, 2015 9:48PM PDT

As what I understand,Windows save all my wifi password somewhere in the registry.If the windows is formatted you'll have a copy of the old windows -Windows.old.So,given that information i should still have that info in there right?Is there any software I can use to have that recover? or have it extracted manually that would be fine.I dont care if its difficult as long as it is possible.

- Collapse -
You can try JellyBean
Jul 21, 2015 9:55PM PDT
- Collapse -
If you "formatted"
Jul 21, 2015 9:56PM PDT

then you won't see any windows.old but since you mention it, I'm thinking perhaps you didn't "format" but just did a fresh install on top of the current partition, which then created a windows.old and you were just using improper terminology.